


Encirclement

by curious_eye



Category: Space Force (TV)
Genre: Actually a slow build this time, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Inaccurate inaccuracies, M/M, Slow Build, Updating tags as I go (because I don’t know what’s happening)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-25
Updated: 2020-08-31
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:28:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25515028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/curious_eye/pseuds/curious_eye
Summary: In the 2020 elections a new president is elected. The US government has been compromised; people are selling top secret information to the highest bidder.The only people who can be trusted to stop it are part of the most recent edition to the armed forces, Space Force.(The Space Force team kind of becoming spies AU that no one asked for but some people apparently want, complete witheventualChan/Tony and Mark/Adrian if they ever sort out their issues)
Relationships: Adrian Mallory & Mark R. Naird, Adrian Mallory/Mark R. Naird, Chan Kaifang & F. Tony Scarapiducci, Chan Kaifang/F. Tony Scarapiducci, F. Tony Scarapiducci/Hannah Howard, Mark R. Naird/Kelly King
Comments: 41
Kudos: 24





	1. Chapter 1

**Thursday 28th January 2021  
21:15**

Dinner had been made via some sort of autopilot setting Chan wasn’t aware he had. It remained a mystery whether or not this preoccupied version of him could properly season food, only because it also seemed to fall short when it came to registering the taste of whatever it was he’d cooked.

Just two months after the election, it felt like a far too short length of time for such a bombshell to have been dropped by Naird, especially one that surely contravened numerous employment laws. Not that anyone was going to be keeping count; the safety net of the law was something you seemed to lose when it came to being employed by the government.

The email came as he walked from the corner kitchen in his house to the sofa, the vibration of his phone from his pocket stopping him in his tracks. He unlocked the screen, trying to ignore the nervous fidgeting of his fingers against the phone case as the message he’d been expecting all evening loaded. He read it once, twice, then skimmed through it one more time as if its contents was capable of changing in front of his eyes.

He didn’t realise he’d been stood in limbo between the kitchen table and the sofa until the phone in his hand began to vibrate again, a chain of messages from the rest of the science division coming through at once. His frown deepened at the first few.

_See you on Monday, then?_

_Sounds like everyone else has been offered the transfer._

He swiped the keyboard up and down on the screen, never finding the resolve to type out a reply. Reading it in an email was one thing, but to write it out himself was a step too far towards acknowledging it. There was no going back after that.

Enough time passed for the messages to pile up, the tone shifting over time.

_You did get the offer, right?_

_There must have been a mistake if they’re not keeping you._

_Don’t worry about it, probably just a bug in the system._

His frustration finally won out, pushing him another few steps towards the sofa. He toyed with the phone briefly, contemplating a frustrated call to Doctor Mallory (surely he’d had some say in the decision), ready to get angry with a man he’d considered a mentor but more prepared to be reduced to pleading with him in no time at all. It wasn’t worth the embarrassment, even if it did seem like the only way he could hope to keep his job.

The phone got tossed to one side, his body following suit as he collapsed across the sofa cushions, propping his head up with his arm as a pillow and staring blankly at the ceiling. His thoughts turned to the job search that would surely need to commence the next day and then to the following apartment search; there were no opportunities in Wild Horse unless you wanted to work at the gas station or the diner.

Having to go back to the base seemed like a final bit of mockery from whoever had dropped his name from the list, taunting him with the promise of an hour to pack up the most exciting job he’d probably ever have. After only a year, it hadn’t exactly lasted long.

He remembered a conversation with Mallory a couple of weeks after Space Force started up. How the older man had complimented his work so far, invited Chan to shadow his role as chief scientist occasionally, suggested without saying as much that Chan would one day need to know how to take on those extra responsibilities. It didn’t make sense; going from that and ending up fired or let go or whatever label they’d put on it to make it seem less like it was his own fault.

But really, if they were keeping everyone else, who else could be responsible?

* * *

**Friday 29th January 2021  
10:05**

“You too?”

Chan glanced up from the workbench where he had been prevaricating over what to do with the myriad of exotic plants he’d been studying. He’d been focusing on the same table for a long time, more than content to put his back to the rest of the room and forget about everything else he still needed to sort through.

“How could you tell?” He asked, watching Tony step into the room, letting the door close behind him. It shut with a slight rattle, one that Doctor Mallory would have chastised him for as the glassware on surrounding tables shuddered and clattered together.

“You look like I did when I looked in the mirror this morning,” Tony replied, collapsing in a nearby chair with his usual drama but a far more downbeat overtone. Chan watched him clasp his hands on the table, then move one to drag through his hair before returning it to the other to fidget the two of them together in front of him. For Tony that was the equivalent of pouring his heart out, a genuine admission of nerves or discomfort or whatever it was he was feeling.

“All the others got transferred,” Chan muttered, leaning his weight forwards on his elbows and resting against the surface. “Except me.”

“Other places will be queuing up to hire you,” Tony said, evidently avoiding any sort of comforting talk around Chan being left out amongst his colleagues in favour of offering a practical solution. Chan watched him thoughtfully for a moment as if there was a physical quality to his unwavering persistence that could be observed. Like normal, he saw none of the process behind the solutions (however terrible they sometimes were) that Tony would always generate when a problem arose; it seemed that there was at least some element of enigma to the overbearing man in front of him.

“It’s a shame that all of this will go to waste,” he remarked instead of probing that point any further. He waved his hand generally in the air, not even sure what he meant by 'all of this.' His own research maybe - one year’s worth? Or the base itself, left empty until it was used for some other pointless project? Or maybe the time he’d spent there… or the people?

“I don’t know what I’m going to do yet so maybe it can be put to use as a place for me to hide out in for a while,” Tony joked, his emphasis falling far more heavily on the uncertainty than his weak attempt at humour. “Even if I got a glowing recommendation from the general, everyone knows we’ve been shut down, so they have literally no motivation to hire me.”

“You don’t have contacts?” Chan asked, regretting the question as soon as a wistful expression briefly flickered across Tony's face. He took some satisfaction from the fact that it was swiftly replaced by doubt.

“Hannah, maybe,” Tony said predictably, “She’s always had more connections.” He trailed off again, seeming incapable of sustaining a thought throughout their conversation. Chan eyed him, moving to continue clearing his desk so he didn’t dwell on any conclusions he might have reached. It seemed futile, and out of place considering their half-colleague, half-friend relationship status, to point out how much of a bad idea it would be for Tony to go anywhere near Hannah and expect to get a good job out of it. Then again, he didn’t understand their relationship (and was slightly grateful to be left ignorant), only hearing the occasional comment on Tony’s end. 

It was always the same with Hannah and Tony. He’d be all smiles one morning, talking about how she had been in the area and she’d decided to drop in and _wasn’t that nice?_ Then a day later, or two if he got lucky, there would be a sulking shadow following General Naird around for a week or so. Tony wouldn’t mention her until the cycle started all over again. It felt like someone needed to tell him that healthy relationships didn’t function like that. Chan continued to feel like it wasn’t his place to be that person.

“I should probably stop procrastinating and actually deal with my office.” Tony pulled Chan out of his thoughts, his tone maybe implying that the silence had settled between them for a little too long. And there was that awkward clause in their relationship; the unfamiliar familiarity that they had with each other that meant some silence was comfortable but too much tipped the balance.

“Yeah, I guess I should-” Chan waved a hand towards his desk again. Tony's incoherence seemed to be contagious. Tony nodded, retreating to the door but walking backwards because there was enough history in a year to make their last conversation hard to end. Chan fought the urge to shake off the weight that settled over it, trying not to turn away as if he could pretend Tony was alone in perceiving the unspoken difficulty they had in saying goodbye. Anything profound would be overkill, anything less felt like a disservice.

It was a year of Chan playing into Tony's gullibility, only to be on the receiving end of the other man's petulance in retaliation. It was a year of exchanging amused glances over the heads of Naird and Mallory as the older men argued about something inconsequential for far too long. It was a year of the seat opposite Chan in the canteen becoming Tony's chosen space to eat lunch if their breaks happened to coincide.

“I better be the first person to hear about it if you figure out that invisibility cloak shit,” Tony said with a brief grin, knocking the door open behind him with his elbow and standing in the opening hesitantly.

“Sure,” Chan replied sarcastically, “I’ll call you before I even publish the paper.” Tony's mouth had settled again but flickered back into a ghost of a smile, punctuated by another slightly awkward nod. He tapped his hand against the glass door absentmindedly, shuffling out into the hallway far enough for it to shut. Chan smirked when he waved almost sheepishly from the other side of the glass, returning the gesture as the tangle of things he wouldn’t be dealing with settled in his stomach.

He turned back to the plants to shake off the sensation, unhappy to only feel it grow when he tried to ignore it. Instead, he reached for the most recently emptied tray, collecting the remaining soil into one corner and almost picking the container up to tip it into the nearby bin. Almost, because his attention was caught by something lying beneath the brown sediment. He brushed the dirt away curiously, holding the card he retrieved up in one hand, rubbing the other against his lab coat to clean off the soil.

What was slightly disappointing was that it was nothing more than a laminated piece of card. What was less disappointing was the date and string of numbers printed on one side. 

The date was for three days’ time and it came with a set of coordinates.

* * *

**Thursday 28th January 2021  
09:00**

The office door opening was a reliable sign that it was precisely nine o’clock. Tony's head tilted slightly at the sound but he maintained the focus on his phone, letting Naird complain fruitlessly about the lack of respect for his waiting room or Brad's failings as a glorified guard dog or whatever it was he chose to focus on that day.

The general was a well-oiled machine, even after twelve months of the same routine surely wearing down his resolve. He even managed to keep up their daily meetings despite his consistent state of helpless frustration which Tony chose to be aware of and then do nothing at all to change. The lack of an effort on his part did nothing to interrupt the natural routine Naird seemed to have settled into, the disruption to Mark's clockwork habits that he so clearly caused becoming absorbed into the strictly organised, adaptive network of the general's duties.

“I took your advice on board about steering clear from political satire on the twitter account, sir,” Tony reported first, noting Naird's stoic expression flicker with amusement but then return to an unusual state of distraction. “So I will avoid making any more jokes involving new POTUS.”

“Just POTUS is fine, Tony,” Mark interjected, at least glancing up from the file in his hands. Beyond his usual disinterest in social media talk, he seemed to be altogether more preoccupied than normal. “Considering he’s been in office for a month now, the 'new' has almost definitely worn off.”

“And what is so much more interesting than our meeting?” Tony chose to ignore his reply entirely and pursue his own line of inquiry. Mark looked briefly guilty to have been caught but even this didn’t hold his attention for long, his eyes drifting away from Tony's calculating gaze and back to the file on the desk. Tony shot out of his chair and tried to catch a glance of the document before it was pulled tightly to Mark's chest.

“What’s this?” He complained, only partly mocking as his genuine curiosity won out. “Are you keeping something from the good people of America, sir?” Mark rolled his eyes, closing the file in his hands firmly and placing it in a drawer.

“It’s confidential,” he said elusively, “So yes, I’m definitely keeping it from you and, by extension, the rest of the world, I imagine.”

“I’m flattered that you think I have that much influence,” Tony retorted, pressing one hand to his chest and looking overly flattered before folding his arms and crossing one leg over the other. In his head, he was aiming for something professional or maybe authoritative but Mark continued to look unimpressed. “But between you and me?”

“It took me less than a week of working with you to realise that no conversation is ever just between you and me,” Mark said pointedly, shaking his head. “You'll find out soon enough.”

It was Tony’s turn to look unimpressed, scuffing his shoes together childishly but not pushing the point any further. He kept himself quiet by watching the minute hand on the clock behind Mark tick closer to the end of their meeting and absently wondering how many more seconds it would have to sweep through until ‘soon enough’ came around.

* * *

**Friday 29th January 2021  
10:30**

Tony was of the opinion that the quicker he removed all evidence of his work from the Space Force base, the more insignificant an event it would be in his past. Maybe, if he swept all of the strange souvenirs and stationary into the two boxes on his office floor, they would take the entire experience with them: moving out to Colorado, the excitement he’d hidden from his expression the first time he’d pulled up to the inconspicuous rock face in the middle of nowhere and keyed in the passcode, everything.

He also didn’t want to see Mark Naird. His memory of the previous day was soured for a number of reasons, not least because the general hadn’t considered it appropriate for him to know what was going on. Surely, he could have handled the announcement better, given Naird a way to break the news without causing mass confusion. Then again if he wasn’t being kept on by the Air Force, it stood to reason that General Naird would not have considered his input valuable. That would sting a little if Tony were to let it but he buried it under another handful of scrap paper and free pens that they’d never managed to hand out in sufficient quantities at the school outreach events he’d been forced to oversee.

The room was disappointingly bare by the time he was finished with it. He’d crammed himself onto every shelf, forgetting how clear and new it had looked on his first day, forgetting the conviction he’d had to make his new job a permanent one. Of course that determination had remained in a different form, lingering below an opaque layer of modern references and a liking for sarcasm that wound Naird up so much that Tony frequently wondered why the general had ever decided to hire him. That thought had returned now, forcing itself out between the flaps of the two boxes as he left each of them in the doorway and tried to concentrate on completing a final check of the room.

Seeing Chan already felt like it had been a bad idea, the scientist as much a part of Tony’s daily routine on the base as he was an ingrained feature of Chan’s. But even if they had begrudgingly got on after a couple of months of keeping their distance, Tony couldn’t help but feel it should have been Naird who he saw last. Not that he was in a rush to track down the other man, his wounded pride acting as enough of a deterrent.

Whilst Doctor Mallory had always been forthcoming in his praise and, more often, his criticism, General Naird had always been reserved with the former. Tony had got used to the level of detachment that Mark managed to maintain from the people he employed (with the exception of Mallory), his hope of receiving any positive attention dwindling almost daily during the first six months.

There was no escaping the way Mark held them all at arm’s length, particularly not when it reminded Tony uncomfortably of himself and even more so of his parents. That explained the desperate need to please that drove him crazy but probably never even registered with Mark. It almost certainly justified the little rush of achievement he’d brush off as ridiculous whenever Naird struck up a casual conversation with him; as if doing that proved his trust of Tony or even just his increasing tolerance for spending time with him.

Either way, Tony could count those moments on one hand, instantly knowing that several had happened in his office, before it was bare and back to factory settings, ready for a layer of dust to occupy it instead of a person. He wandered over to the window, squeezing himself into the corner between the wall and a bookshelf and craning his neck so he could just see one of the smaller launch pads through the glass. Naird had knocked on his door when he was stood there once, raising an eyebrow in a sure indication of his surprise that Tony would be at all interested by the launch testing that had been taking place that day.

Tony had felt a little sheepish, letting his façade drop nonetheless (because he wasn’t about to come up with a plausible explanation for why he, the uninterested media manager, had deliberately forced himself into an uncomfortable position just so he could watch a rocket’s engines get tested) and waiting for Naird to walk straight out the door and question the arrogance he normally had to put up with every day.

Instead, Naird had dropped whatever it was he’d been delivering and walked with his usual, unfaltering posture to the window. He’d started talking about how he didn’t really understand the science behind the testing, as if Tony’s sudden interest suggested that he did. Tony had been reluctant to admit that it was just that the roaring, bright orange flames gave him that feeling of being a kid again, the age where everyone wants to be an astronaut, so he’d nodded along with Naird’s confusion and offered up little in return.

Upon reflection it might have been his own walls coming down that had lowered Mark’s ever so slightly; their shared moment of being out of character prompting him to make that dry remark about how loud noises and things setting on fire did not make for a particularly calming work environment for someone who had been a soldier their entire life. Tony had laughed a little, not unkindly, and finally tried to get him to admit that he must have wanted to be an astronaut when he was younger.

“Space always seemed very far away when I was a kid,” Naird had replied, rolling his eyes at his own response, “Of course, flying a fighter jet seemed altogether more attainable.”

The next day things had been back to normal. The launch testing was over and Tony left their morning meeting in a sulk because Mark hadn’t approved of the angle he wanted them to take in an interview that day. If he remembered correctly, he managed to rile Mark up so much over the next few days that he’d been threatened with getting ‘fired’ and not for the first time.

Back in the present, he sidled out of the corner, ruining the moment as he had back then by remembering who his brain was determined to blame for all of this in the first place. He couldn’t help but wish that Mark had known how much he’d needed this job to work out and that maybe the older man would have fought for his job to remain intact as they were moved back to the Air Force if that had been the case.

He surveyed the corner of the room he’d just been in, noticing a piece of card left on the end of the bookshelf nearest the window. It looked unfamiliar as he flipped it over in his hand, catching sight of some numbers as he slipped it into one of his boxes. He knew they were mostly filled with rubbish, scraps of meaningless notes that he would have to force his overly sentimental self to part with. 

He’d deal with all of that when he got home.


	2. Chapter 2

**Thursday 28th January 2021  
09:30**

Adrian liked to think he’d maintained a professional distance from General Naird during their time working together; a hypothetical detachment that was disproved the moment he was summoned to the general’s office on Thursday morning and instantly knew there was something wrong.

Since the start of Space Force, the office had changed very little. The layout itself stayed the same, with its overpopulation of seating options and exuberant decorations along the back wall that had never mellowed to suit Mark’s personality. If anything, it had only drifted further from the room’s inhabitant, more model rockets joining those that had been there before along with some extra plaques that no doubt boasted achievements Adrian had never realised they had been awarded.

Just as the space around him had not changed significantly, Mark had been another constant throughout the past year. The brash way he dealt with problems; sometimes a reason to admire him, other times a reason to doubt him; remained a permanent obstacle in Adrian’s working life, one that he had grown to recognise long before it potentially caused him any issue.

Mark was stood by the window. There was a folder tucked beneath his arm, too deliberate an action for the information contained within it to be unimportant, and the tension in his shoulders suggested it was not particularly welcome knowledge either. These were the classic warning signs of a situation, one that Mark would ask for advice over and then proceed to ignore whatever Adrian said. And if Adrian hadn’t experienced it for several months already he would have suspected a level of malicious intent behind the decision to repeatedly discount professional, scientific opinion – to his own face, no less. But that was the thing with Mark: he was so incredibly out of touch with those sorts of feelings, ignorant to his own shortcomings as if he didn’t realise how frustrating it could be.

With all of that established, there only remained one question. Considering the strong correlation between rocket launches and these occurrences, Adrian wracked his brains for a project he could possibly have forgotten about but with the new leadership in the country, there had been a quiet transition period in which all of their work had been grounded.

“I don’t suppose you have good news for me,” he commented from the door when Mark made no move to suggest he had registered the company. He turned at the voice, not even offering a wry upturn of his mouth to offset his pensive expression.

“Adrian, take a seat.” He walked back over to his desk, depositing the file on top of a leaning pile of other documents although his lingering gaze suggested that it would be receiving much more of his attention than those it was balanced on. “I don’t have good news, unfortunately.”

Adrian stayed quiet, too accustomed to their bad news coming out of nowhere and pertaining to almost any subject, however trivial. There was no use guessing if it was a project being completely written off or a plumbing leak that had caused a minor setback to some research. Both were equally as likely. Both had happened over the last year. Numerous times.

“POTUS is shifting the focus of the armed forces back to more traditional values,” Mark explained cryptically. Adrian wasn’t too worried, knowing that their entire division had been the sole dream of their previous president. No one had expected to continue to receive the funding and freedom that they’d enjoyed (or in some cases tolerated) over the last year. “The need for a Space Force with our current levels of investment and infrastructure has been deemed unnecessary by the new administration.”

“Well, perhaps under more reliable leadership, our focus can turn towards our scientific endeavours,” Mallory replied, knowing from Mark’s wincing expression that he had misread the situation. It was more than the general’s usual disdain for their aforementioned research or his dismissal of Adrian’s blatant anti-militarisation agenda. “Or not.”

“Tomorrow, the government will announce that Space Force is being reabsorbed into the Air Force, effective immediately,” Mark said quietly, his eyes drifting back to that folder subconsciously. Adrian stayed quiet, hoping to play off his surprise as a polite gesture for Mark to continue uninterrupted. “I have been given a day to inform everyone on the base.”

“We’re being reabsorbed, not shut down,” Adrian observed, already feeling uncertain in his continuing use of ‘we’ to refer to a project he may no longer be part of, “So presumably there will be some degree of job security? Surely, this isn’t all happening from one day to the next without a fair amount of warning.” Mark’s initial shrug was not reassuring and he seemed deflated despite his usual composure.

“The workforce will be reduced a little, to allow for duplicate roles within the Air Force,” he replied reluctantly, “I was anticipating a decision like this eventually but not so soon. I’d been warned but not – not so soon.”

“That can’t be legal,” Adrian said measuredly. Mark only raised an eyebrow, inviting him to direct his anger wherever he pleased, even when Mark himself was very clearly not the one who deserved the blame. “How will we know who’s being kept on? And what about everyone who isn’t? I suppose they are expected to interview for new jobs and be hired in no time at all?” Even saying it felt hollow, his pent-up energy turning away from Mark entirely and leaving behind nothing but some reluctant sympathy.

“It’s an unorthodox situation,” Mark conceded, sounding very much like he was reciting whatever it was that he had read in the folder. The folder that Adrian was itching more and more to read with every passing second. “People will be informed this evening and I have been assured that there are measures in place to financially compensate anyone who is not being offered the transfer.”

“Nothing to compensate the temporary uprooting of our lives when we were forced to move out into the middle of nowhere,” Adrian retorted bitterly, hoping that his tone did not feel too targeted. Mark shrugged faintly again, lifting his gaze to a point on the ceiling above Adrian’s head and narrowing his eyes.

“I will be informing everyone this afternoon,” he announced, tone back to its measured professionalism to match his still unwavering expression. Adrian envied his ability to detach from the situation, unable to stop himself from thinking of everyone who worked beneath him.

“I suppose there will be no need for another Chief Scientist at the Air Force,” he said eventually, allowing the thought that had cemented itself at the back of his head to be vocalised. Mark didn’t need to respond aloud, the apology that finally disrupted the manufactured stoicism on his face unmistakeable.

“If it’s any consolation, I don’t think they have space for another four-star general either,” he offered weakly, making a show of not directly responding to Adrian’s assumption. It wasn’t a consolation at all, to think that Mark was also losing a job that he had worked for his entire career to achieve.

“Not to add insult to injury but you have asked Fuck Tony to read over your announcement, haven’t you?” Adrian asked delicately, choosing to steer swiftly away from his own predicament and save it for a later date. “You aren’t exactly known for making wise public speaking choices.”

“I haven’t,” Mark admitted, a wry smile aborted before he even fully attempted the expression. He glanced down at the desk and then over at the window, never fully returning his attention to Adrian. “I think it’s best if he hears it with everyone else.” There was an unexpected layer of guilt to his confession, one that instantly proved that it was not just Tony’s inability to keep information private that was the problem.

Adrian was surprised at his own lack of bewilderment when the eventual chink in Mark’s armour ended up being their obnoxiously exuberant media manager. That he would dread having to personally tell Tony what was happening before everyone else knew and all because it meant he would also have to tell Tony he was one of many losing their jobs.

“He won’t be happy about that,” Adrian said drily, not sure if he was referring to the unemployment or Mark’s decision to keep secrets. The general huffed out a slight laugh and shook his head.

“No, I don’t imagine he will be.”

* * *

**Friday 29th January 2021  
09:55**

“It’s fine.”

The contents of a plant pot joined a growing pile of soil in one tray.

“I can figure something out.”

The next sample was fussed over for a moment and then set to one side with a small group of others that seemed to have survived the disposal process.

“I mean, I don’t know what that something is yet but-”

The plants were abandoned momentarily, the pause punctuated by a beaker rattling against its neighbours as it was returned to a shelf.

“I’m sure it will be fine. I just have to figure out what I want to do next… and then try and justify to whoever interviews me that I wasn’t fired, I was just…”

“Chan,” Adrian interjected, finally getting the other scientist’s attention. He had been surprised to be uninterrupted on his walk from the car park to the main building and set on edge by the continuing emptiness of its hallways. The lab, at least, had held one occupant.

“Sorry,” Chan apologised sheepishly, nudging the bridge of his glasses with the back of one hand, his fingers lightly soil stained. Adrian allowed himself a rare smile, aiming for something reassuring even as his own anger on Chan’s behalf began to simmer.

“Perhaps there has just been a mistake,” he said with a certainty he didn’t possess, “It seems very odd that you would be the only one to go.” Chan shrugged, looking too disheartened to consider the possibility for very long. He turned back to his desk and restacked some papers inconsequently.

“I won’t be the only person who has to work something out,” he replied eventually. Mallory sighed under his breath, refraining from unleashing a tirade on Chan when it deserved to be received by a relevant audience; General Naird, for example. It was an understanding thing to say, on Chan’s part, but something that Adrian wanted to argue against fiercely. Chan shouldn’t have been on the list of people having to work something out when he was deserving of his place in the science division already.

“Well, I need to tie up any loose ends with General Naird at some point today,” Adrian said, “I’ll make some enquiries.”

Chan moved back to the bench of plants wordlessly, distracted and having achieved very little at his desk.

“And if it doesn’t work itself out, you can count on me for a reference,” Adrian continued, wanting to say more but knowing there was only one person who he needed to see whilst he was at the base. Chan was as diplomatic as ever when they parted ways, exercising a degree of self-restraint that Adrian was sure he had shed at the start of his argumentative days.

As he left the lab, Adrian caught sight of Tony approaching from the opposite direction, his head tilted down to focus on his phone. It was the first time that Mallory was thankful for the other man’s obsession with technology, slipping away before he had to have another difficult conversation with someone he imagined would be far less understanding.

* * *

**Thursday 28th January 2021  
14:30**

The announcement had come in an unsuspecting email. There was to be a base-wide meeting that afternoon, attendance compulsory. When he read it, the most extreme reaction Chan had experienced had been one of frustration that it would interrupt his mid-afternoon recordings.

But at the right time, despite the plants that were queued up for his attention around the lab, he joined the group of scientists as they integrated themselves into the stream of employees heading out of the building.

He quickly grew restless, forced to continue following the people in front of them without knowing the reason for this sudden assembly of the entire population of the base. The incidental chatter of the scientists around him faded into the static as he spotted a crisp suit up ahead, its owner unusually attentive and not buried in his phone.

“Tony!” Chan called, to no avail. Surely the media manager would know what was happening, being responsible for speeches and suchlike. He broke away from his own group, sidling past people and muttering half-hearted apologies as he moved upstream through the crowd. Eventually he was close enough to tap Tony’s shoulder. “Hey, Tony?”

“Doctor Chan!” Tony turned, his voice slipping into that singsong cadence that would normally match the wide, occasionally disingenuous grin on his face. Normally, that is, because today the expression was swiftly diluted by a frown.

“What’s going on?” Chan asked, feeling his own hopefulness fading at the sight of Tony’s perplexed expression.

“I don’t know,” he replied, sounding considerably vexed to answer in such a way. “It’s not anything I’ve been told about and Naird has been ghosting my emails about it all morning. I think he’s also been hiding somewhere on the base because he wasn’t in his office when I went back there to ask.” He glowered unhappily at that but did, however, seem pleased that Chan would think to ask him first, even when surrounded by literally every other option. Chan thought it was unwise to inflate his ego like that any more than was strictly necessary.

The current in the crowd carried them towards one of the biggest hangars on the base, its interior usually holding various aircrafts but adapted now as if a press conference was about to take place. This only added to the mystery; it couldn’t be to do with the media or else Tony would have known. He definitely had some novel methods but he was hardly negligent when it came to doing his work.

On the raised stage, General Naird and Doctor Mallory were engaged in a conversation, the latter appearing irritated although from the distance Chan was observing from it was impossible to tell if this was the usual display of frustration from Mallory or something deeper. Their discourse seemed to end on a sour note, with Naird’s mouth twitching briefly downwards before snapping back to the perfect parallel line of stoicism that he prided himself on. Adrian seemed far less concerned with hiding his expression, openly wrinkling his nose and shaking his head to himself. It at least added some well needed familiarity to proceedings; even if it was counterintuitive for Chan to be reassured by Mallory looking so put out.

“Thank you for assembling at such short notice,” the general addressed everyone tersely once they had settled down, the uncertainty of the meeting clearly promoting the idea that everyone should share their amateur-hour conspiracy theories with one another. Chan had expected Tony to have something to add to the snippets of conversation happening around them but he remained quiet, looking thoughtful to what Chan considered a dangerous extent given his reputation for coming up with terrible plans.

“Effective tomorrow, Space Force will be reabsorbed into the Air Force and the base here in Colorado will be shut down,” Naird continued stiffly, his voice turning to static as Chan’s eyebrows drew together. At the general’s side, Doctor Mallory was facing the crowd although his gaze focused noticeably on a point above the eyes of the onlookers.

“Are you kidding me?” Tony whispered under his breath, finally reanimating and drawing Chan's attention for a moment. “Why does he never tell me about this shit? It’s literally my job!”

“We will begin a phased departure system tomorrow morning where you will be granted an hour to remove any personal belongings,” Naird had carried on speaking over the rumble of unrest, leaving Chan to try and fill in the blanks for himself. “You will receive notice of your employment status this evening, along with a new start date if that is relevant to your circumstances.” 

It was clear what that meant: if the Air Force had space for you - if they wanted you. Tony seemed to have caught on as well, his well-tailored façade cracking despondently for a moment. The Air Force had its own media management team, a whole group of Tonys with no space for another one. Chan couldn’t help but think that their science division had plenty of carbon copies of himself as well. Although maybe his active research projects would count for something.

To say their lives were not insignificantly affected by this announcement, the general was certainly leaving it vague (which Chan knew not to do since he’d once had to sit through what he was loathed to consider a seminar from Tony on the appropriate way to address an audience). The man in question seemed to share his critique, pausing his own disappointment to roll his eyes with an aching familiarity.

Chan wouldn’t see him do that anymore if what was occurring in front of him was actually happening for real. It struck him as odd to think of that as the first thing he’d never see again, maybe even the first thing he’d miss. But everyone would be going their separate ways and, unless the entire operation was just cloned at the Air Force, even continuing there wouldn’t be the same.

Naird seemed to have made himself scarce as the theories passing around the crowd became questions. Questions like was it even legal for them to cut people off at such short notice? Was Space Force less of a priority now, given the recent change of government? Would they get any answers beyond an email telling them their employment status?

Chan turned to hypothesise all of this with Tony, hoping that the other man would keep quiet for long enough to act as a sponge for everything he suddenly found himself needing to say. But Tony had somehow slipped out of the crowd, disappearing to literally anywhere else and only making himself another one of Chan’s questions.

In spite of there being several hours to go before the fabled email turned up in his inbox, he already felt an acute sense of loss. Would the people he’d worked alongside for a year disappear entirely from his life like Tony had in the crowd?

* * *

**Friday 29th January 2021  
11:00**

Adrian kept the back to his office door when the sound of a cleared throat evidently requested his attention. The sympathy he’d carried for Mark had been steadily leaking since his conversation, the general’s difficult position no longer so watertight in avoiding Adrian’s judgement.

“Adrian.” 

To ignore a direct address was a little harder; he couldn’t just blame his own preoccupation for not hearing. But Adrian could be unwaveringly stubborn and the curveball of Chan’s dismissal only motivated him to give Mark the cold shoulder. He’d been vocal in his disagreement of a hundred different plans during their time working together but this time it seemed more effective to do the opposite to express his discomfort.

“Is this about Doctor Chan?” Mark asked from the doorway, evidently determined not to be turned away. His unusual perceptiveness coaxed a derisive snort from Adrian but he clamped his mouth shut to keep the outburst that could easily follow. “You know, seeing as I’m no longer in charge of anything, you can disagree with me all you want and face no repercussions.”

The offer, whilst tempting, only riled Adrian up further because it reminded him of what Mark was losing as well – to run something as a four-star general was the other man’s dream, even if Space Force had seen that dream packaged a little differently. But Adrian didn’t want to feel that compassion again, not when his best scientist had been cast off to find a job, weighed down by the added difficulty of trying to explain why he hadn’t held onto his last one.

“I thought that would have convinced you,” Mark remarked drily, his tone unwavering in its persistence but morphing more and more into the way he spoke when it was just the two of them on his front porch. Even that familiarity made Adrian bristle, the association carrying a heavy weight and another reminder that it wasn’t just a job that he was losing, even if he tried to convince himself of the inverse.

“He was going to replace me as Chief Scientist one day,” he said eventually, the reality of their last twelve months together kicking him into action. He could be angry and still try not to create a farewell situation that he regretted. “He was the best we had.”

“I know,” Mark replied. If Adrian hadn’t heard his apologetic tone of voice, he would have said it was an incredibly blasé response but instead he let the general continue. “Things will work out for him in the end. As they will for the rest of us.”

“I imagine you already know what’s next for you,” Adrian retorted, unable to keep the bitterness from returning, not when Mark was happy to stand in the doorway and wax poetic about everything being alright eventually. “You’re not getting fired and we haven’t been shut down in the midst of a crisis so, what’s next?”

“I’ve been offered some work, at least in the short term,” Mark had the decency to mutter this, although he rushed to clarify, “Not like what I was doing here. Not what a four-star general would normally be doing.” It was this that persuaded Adrian to turn and face him.

“Surely you haven’t said you’ll go back and work below General Grabaston,” he said, making a poor display of keeping the plea from his tone. Mark looked relieved that he still seemed to care, even if the evidence was quickly hidden by a return of his anger.

“I feel bad enough for putting most of the people here through that. I’m not going to do it to myself.”

“How much of a say did you get?” Adrian asked, leaning against his partially cleared desk and letting his more relaxed stance act as an invitation for Mark to stop hovering at the door. The general walked in, patrolling the perimeter of the room and trying to look distracted by the plants that still populated the shelves.

“It was mostly a case of filling in the gaps at the Air Force,” he explained eventually, “Allowing for expansion in some divisions so they can handle the Space Force workload as well. Like I said yesterday.”

“But there wasn’t space for the highest-level scientist here, besides me,” Adrian finished for him, still sounding unconvinced. “I was unsurprised by my own predicament and, as you have already said, I wouldn’t want to work with Grabaston in the first place but Doctor Chan had a future here. More so than the rest of the group, all of whom have been transferred.”

“Just,” Mark sighed, cutting himself off and returning to the door. Already, Adrian expected to dislike the next thing he said, especially if he was putting himself in the best position to make a swift exit. “Clear your things out, Adrian. Everything will sort itself out.”

“It must be nice to be walking out of this mess with a clear conscience, general,” Adrian replied, hearing the barbs in his own voice resurfacing. So much for ending on good terms. “Whatever they’ve got lined up for you must be a really interesting project for you to drop this one so happily.”

“ _Adrian_ ,” Mark pleaded momentarily, his posture deflating with another heavy exhalation. “You know how important this has been to me and, I would hope, to you as well. The fact of the matter is that I have been given instructions and all I’m doing is following them.”

“You don’t want help defying an order this time?”

Mark laughed drily, the sound barely distinguishable from a breath.

“The last time I followed that advice I almost lost my job,” he said, a wistful smile almost establishing itself before his expression mellowed. “Make sure you get everything; the base will be closed from tomorrow and no one will be allowed back.”

He left abruptly; his rush cowardly if Adrian allowed himself to experience the continued frustration in the back of his mind. Mostly it felt like Mark was giving them both the excuse to play down the moment.

His anger didn’t stay at bay for the remaining time he spent in his office. If anything, it matured with each shelf he cleared and if he found an interesting card tucked amongst the foliage of one of his favourite specimens, his unwavering mood didn’t show it. And even if the drama of the date and coordinates had Mark written all over it, he continued to think about Chan and wonder if there was more than one card, if the people without jobs were in fact being recruited for something else. He wondered all of this but did not allow himself even a second to be forgiving.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This update is a little earlier than planned but I finished this chapter quickly in a classic display of writing to avoid my other responsibilities XD
> 
> Thank you for the feedback so far, I’m glad there’s a little group of people who seem interested by this weird idea haha


	3. Chapter 3

**Monday 1st February 2021  
08:30**

The plains in Colorado were endless, broken only at the horizon by looming rock faces and sweeping hills. In winter, it wasn’t uncommon for the desert landscape to turn white with snow or for the usually arid, cracked ground to disappear under an unsurpassable layer of frozen water, making everything all the more inaccessible.

Fortunately, Monday morning saw the re-emergence of more temperate weather; the winds warmed by moderate temperatures and the weak rays of winter sunlight just stretching far enough to burn through the thin layer of cloud.

Naird pulled up at the side of a road that would not be used that morning by anyone else but those who had been invited, if they were to turn up, that was. Despite the season, he maintained that his uniform would be adequate but left his sunglasses in the car, not wanting to look too much like he was secretly allowing himself to be excited by their predicament.

It was hard to get too enthusiastic, his attempts at positivity easily drowned out by unwanted complications. Like Doctor Mallory who had been far more willing to fight Chan’s corner and reluctant to trust him for just a couple more days. Like Fuck Tony, who he still hadn’t seen since the announcement, who would no doubt have an objection or a thousand to get through before he agreed to these new circumstances. And then there was everyone else and the question of whether or not they would turn up.

Naird arrived far earlier than the time he had printed on the cards, partly because he liked to be prepared but largely due to his undesirable need to constantly torture himself, staring at the furthest point of the dusty track he could see and hoping that another vehicle might appear between blinks. When he forced himself to look away, he’d lean against his car and pull up the coordinates on his phone again, spinning the extra card between his fingers and checking that each and every number matched.

He got the sense, at least from Adrian’s reaction to what had happened, that he wasn’t the most popular man on the base; the fact that there was no longer a base largely resting on his shoulders. In the grand scheme of things, knowing what he did, that probably shouldn’t have bothered him. And it didn’t to some extent – so far as to say that the base no longer existed, ergo the attitude of the population of that base no longer mattered. Then again, he had meant what he said to Maggie the day he made Four-Star ranking; if he were to be the man tasked with setting up Space Force, he wanted to do it well. It wasn’t the Air Force and it had never grown in the right shape to fill that hole in his career aspirations but it had mattered to him and to give it away to Kick so spontaneously was disappointing.

As structured as the military was, it simultaneously demanded flexibility; you could uproot your life a hundred times over and not be done moving. It was with a weary resignation that he had accepted the appearance of that folder on Friday morning, an attitude that had carried him through the past few days with reasonable effectiveness. It stopped short of calming his tendency to doubt the people he had unquestionably trusted the day POTUS had come to him, not long after the election. He’d been looking for a list of people there and then, a team who could fix whatever it was that no one else could be trusted with. To be adding a name like Tony’s to that list would have seemed ludicrous to him a year earlier.

The horizon was finally broken by a moving shape, swiftly followed by another. Reflexes had Naird on his feet and a pace away from his own car before the two objects approaching him were close enough to even be identified as other cars. He screwed his eyes up as if it would give him the ability to see further, brow furrowed as he attempted to work out who had chosen to follow his mysterious instructions. Whether they were driven by the boredom that losing their jobs provoked or a necessity to follow any avenue that might lead to employment was another question altogether. If Naird was an optimistic man he would have hoped that their motivations fell into neither category.

Adrian’s beaten up car was the first to pull up on the opposite side of the road and a hefty layer of agitation shed itself from Mark’s taut figure as the scientist got out of the car, taking his time to scope out the surroundings, with a glance in every direction. Instead of walking straight over, he concentrated on the vehicle that had stopped behind him.

“Captain Ali,” he greeted as Angela got out, mimicking his perusal of the barren landscape. She, at least, nodded in Mark’s direction, a smile just about tugging on the corners of her mouth.

“Good morning, Doctor Mallory,” she replied, glancing behind her as the car’s passenger seat door shut. Chan drew up alongside her and smiled bemusedly at her obvious curiosity.

“I thought I recognised your car,” he told Adrian, eventually glancing across the road at Mark. His question was just audible in the empty desert. “Do you know what’s going on?” If Mark wasn’t at an odd angle to them he would have been more certain that Adrian looked comforted to be subjected to the same question he was used to hearing at work, even if it forced him to admit his own uncertainty.

“Not at all,” he replied drily, turning his attention to Mark as well, “I imagine we’re about to find out.”

Mark puffed his chest out, arching his back as the three of them walked over. Again, it was Angela who seemed to be giving him the benefit of the doubt as two sets of distrustful eyes met his own. Chan’s disdain he had anticipated; Adrian’s, he had hoped would be put to one side when the truth came to light.

“You got one too, general?” Chan broke the silence, nodding to the card in Mark’s hand. Its corners had become creased and faded even in the short period of time he had been waiting for, continually worn between his restless fingers.

“Ah, no,” Mark replied, sheepishly tucking the spare into his pocket and glancing over their shoulders to check the road again. It was empty, the stillness of the desert only interrupted by the dust that moved in clouds with the wind. “Thank you for coming, under the circumstances. I think it would be best if we waited for the others before I explain what is happening.”

There must have been something in the tone of his voice that piqued Chan’s interest, the younger scientist’s expression mellowing and creasing all at once into something far more inquisitive. Captain Ali hadn’t lost her own sense of curiosity either, leaving Adrian. The older man barely tried to suppress a sigh and rolled his eyes as he followed Mark’s line of sight towards the horizon. Mark held back a smile at the reaction, knowing that he saved that particular one for situations in which he was willing to be patient and see what happened.

* * *

**Friday 29th January 2021  
13:15**

Beyond her locker beneath the gym, there was very little for Angela to clear out in her allotted time on the base. She had contemplated a walk around the base, the rejection email from the night before still weighing on her as any notion of a future at the Air Force was no longer an option. But it had seemed like an unnecessary act of unkindness towards herself to replace a year of experiences with the memory of empty, abandoned hallways.

Instead, she had taken a seat in the helicopter that had, for all intents and purposes, become her own. Throughout the year, amidst the usual chaos around the base, the general had always needed a pilot on standby when he was dragged between places without warning. It only made sense to keep one of the helicopters grounded for that purpose and her role in flying it at least let her get some flying hours in when the rest of their training comprised of drills in which the instructors would spend more time reminding them to pretend they were in zero gravity than actually critiquing their technique.

Originally, she had only needed to reach into the compartment in the door and remove the detritus that had built up there. Of everything, only the book on astrobotany that Chan had reluctantly let her borrow was of any particular value. She scrunched up the remaining food wrappers and scraps of paper that had built up as a result of that helicopter only ever being flown by her or Mark, dropping them into the bottom of her backpack.

None of this had required her to set foot in the aircraft although that was where she found herself, head resting back in the seat as the familiarity of it all finally allowed her to breathe. It had been too easy to read into the message from the night before, too easy to berate herself for being the only spaceman dropped from the programme. Just being on the base had allowed her to acknowledge that wasn’t true; the Air Force didn’t have space for all of them and it certainly didn’t have room for all but one of them.

Part of her had hoped General Naird might have recommended her, if he’d had a part in choosing that was. She thought that was a reasonable thing to have hoped whilst the less reasonable part of her itched to refresh her inbox every so often in case there had been a mistake. It didn’t help that she had to fend off the temptation every time she checked her phone for other things, a text to Chan remaining unanswered. She hadn’t told him yet, just asking what his fate was. If he had been kept on, she would have expected a wordy, relieved response by now.

The whole thing seemed rushed; from the vague tone of the announcement to a distinct lack of Naird’s usual attention to detail. And it wasn’t as if it could have slipped his mind, something as big as a complete shutdown. And it wasn’t as if he was prone to downplaying the importance of such events. There was something about it all that seemed wrong to Angela, even if all she had to go on was the impression she’d got of the stoic general during long journeys.

She was still trying to put her finger on it when her blank staring aimed at the corner of the car park that was just visible refocused on the windscreen between her and the rest of the base. It was a view she was familiar with; enough to notice the disruption in the black frame of the windscreen wipers in the form of a dark rectangle. Seeing no real value in remaining closed in her own little world inside of the helicopter, she swung the door back open.

Her bag, propped against the landing skids, escaped her attention as she walked around to the front of the aircraft, first nudging the foreign object and then pulling it free when it didn’t seem to be attached. That unreasonable part of her head kicked back into gear at the sight of a date and time, already eager to search up the coordinates that joined that information.

In her preoccupation, she got halfway back to her car before remembering her bag and on her way back to get it she missed General Naird who stood at the doorway of the nearest building, watching on.

* * *

**Monday 1st February 2021  
08:50**

“I suppose we aren’t allowed to know who else might be turning up this morning?” Adrian asked drily after some time had passed. Mark swallowed the urge to respond with the other man’s name, said in that pleading tone he only ever seemed to use behind the closed doors of his office when he needed Adrian to bear with him and stop being his usual argumentative self. It seldom seemed to work; after all, asking Adrian to sit quietly and agree with him went against all of the other man’s tendencies.

“Duncan should be on his way,” Mark replied, forcing himself to be patient with the other man. “And Fuck Tony as well.” There was a brief disruption to the unreadable neutrality on Adrian’s face, a passing frown that lasted no longer than a second. Maybe he shared Mark’s steadily growing doubt that Tony could have outgrown his tendency to take being left in the dark over something so personally.

The next car to appear was not Tony’s, only adding to his now vivid imagination of Tony’s response to the card. Maybe he’d thrown it in the bin along with the rest of the rubbish he allowed to accumulate in his office or perhaps he’d somehow managed to leave it somewhere that Mark hadn’t thought to check when he’d searched the small room at the end of the day.

Duncan had been relatively low down on Mark’s list of recruits when he had considered his options on the base but his wildcard decision felt all the more correct when Adrian aimed a helplessly disbelieving expression at the cracked ground.

“Good morning, sir,” Duncan said with a sharp salute. He looked out of place without his camo uniform to set him apart starkly from the dusty landscape. His confused expression was more familiar, justifying his five minute delay. “Is this a training exercise?”

“What would you be training for?” Angela asked, raising an eyebrow when Duncan shrugged but continued to glance around as if he expected to somehow be ambushed by an army coming down the hill behind Naird.

“I suppose we might as well get started,” Mark conceded, glancing around one more time, “After all, Tony can always be brought up to speed with the rest of the team if necessary.”

“Team?” Adrian interrupted, a faint curiosity undermining his attempts to remain uninterested.

“Yes, this will be the core team but there are three other spacemen and Brad who will be providing-” Mark waved his hand in the air as he tried to sum up his one-star general’s usual function, “Support?”

“Is this still something to do with Space Force then?” Chan asked.

“Not directly,” Mark answered in kind, deciding upon receiving four perplexed expressions that catching Tony up another time would be less effort than making everyone else wait. “Since being elected, POTUS has discovered a number of concerning leaks within the US armed forces. Information that should not have left certain rooms is being funnelled to external sources and being sold at competitive prices.

“As Space Force is in its infancy, there is yet to have been a leak from our branch which suggests the internal source is not a member of our base. As a result, POTUS was happy to entrust me and a group of Space Force employees to track down the leaks and stop them before dangerous information is passed into the wrong hands.”

“Why ask you?” Chan interjected again, sounding like he often did when Naird attempted to make an uneducated scientific point, “Why trust anyone within the armed forces if that’s where the leak is?”

“The president needed someone with military knowledge,” Naird replied, “Maybe someone who would have a reason to be in certain places if they had to be; armed forces events, military bases if we had no other choice…”

“And we are expected to throw ourselves into the midst of what I am sure are dangerous black-market dealings just because Space Force is the most recent addition to the armed forces?” Adrian retorted drily.

“Not to begin with,” Mark said, rushing to clarify when Mallory’s mouth opened in objection once more. “If we can, he wants us to avoid intervening at the internal level and then follow potential buyers and sellers in an attempt to track down the sources. Of course, as the only team tasked with this, we may have to intervene in order to stop confidential information falling into the wrong hands but I am confident we could capably handle that.”

“You think _we_ could handle that?” Adrian argued back again, pointing down the line at the rest of the group, “ _Mark_ , these sorts of leaks can be wide reaching and deeply rooted. Why on earth would we be the only people asked to deal with it? What about the intelligence agencies?”

“POTUS doesn’t know how far the damage has spread outside of the armed forces,” Mark said, knowing already that Adrian wouldn’t be satisfied, “If the network of buyers were to realise they were being investigated, the trail could go cold. We can’t afford to lose track of certain pieces of information.”

“Information that we’re not allowed to know about either, presumably,” Angela interjected, her experience as a spaceman at least meaning she was used to following orders without question.

“Not explicitly, no,” Mark conceded, trying to keep his tone reassuring but authoritative, “But, as I’ve already said, I think I’ve assembled a strong team and we are in a position to perform a vital service for this country.”

“The soldier recruitment speech isn’t going to work here, Mark,” Adrian said tiredly, “I’m sure Doctor Chan feels the same – we are research scientists in fields that have absolutely no application to cryptography or computer technology or engineering on the scale that something like this would require.”

“Just because we are also scientists, it doesn’t mean we can behave like those nerds that James Bond has running around after him,” Chan chimed in, rolling his eyes, “And, you know, in those films it’s always the helpless little tech guys who get kidnapped and strapped to bombs.”

“There will be no kidnapping or strapping to bombs,” Mark interrupted firmly, closing his eyes with a sigh when Duncan’s eyes widened. “Our role, although it is a little vague for the moment, will primarily be reconnaissance and information gathering oriented. Do you really think I would be offering any of you a role that involved anything significantly different to that?”

“Speaking of which,” Adrian said, nodding towards a figure over Mark’s shoulder. He shielded his eyes as he turned, frowning when it became apparent that it was Tony. Adrian’s voice picked up its usual commentary. “Surely he didn’t walk all the way here.”

Tony made his way down the road, phone pocketed once he saw the gathered group. He was dressed down compared to his usual work attire, coloured tie and blazer replaced by an equally bright scarf to fend off the winter temperatures despite the relatively mild day.

“Nice of you to join us,” Adrian spoke up before Mark could, prompting Tony to shake his head emphatically.

“It probably won’t surprise you that I don’t get invited to many places with coordinates so when I looked them up and found this place I assumed I was doing something wrong and not that we’d been asked to meet at literally the least logical location on the planet so I left my car further down the road and decided to have a walk around.” He paused for breath, eyes darting past Mark quickly but scanning between the rest of the group. He planted himself between Duncan and Chan, looking to the latter with a raised eyebrow.

“We’re being recruited to spy on the rest of the armed forces branches and stop dangerous information from being sold to even more dangerous people,” Chan said without being asked, his bemusement turning to sarcasm, “But on the plus side, both kidnapping and explosives have already been ruled out.”

“Good to hear it,” Tony replied, faux seriously, “I’d suggest getting murder and rooftop chases off the cards before we think about accepting the offer though.”

“Alright you two,” Mark interrupted before Chan could continue, “Chan, you’ve already made your current stance known and Tony, you were late so if you’d like to stop wasting everyone’s time…”

Tony looked momentarily like he might argue back but then his determination to give the general the cold shoulder won out and he instead frowned at the ground.

“As I’ve explained to everyone else, POTUS has asked me to lead a team designed to cut off the flow of confidential information out of the armed forces and to external buyers. We would be primarily following these people from a distance and avoiding direct engagement where possible, with the aim of identifying sources and eventually retrieving the information.” Mark waited for another round of complaints, unsure whether relief was an appropriate response to have to the silence that stretched out instead.

“Space Force was my last chance at having a successful career,” Tony commented eventually, his tone too deliberate and clearly masking how he actually felt, “We’re not spies, sir. _You’re_ not a spy.”

“No, I’m not,” Mark agreed, “But the situation calls for some flexibility, Tony, and I think we both know that the Air Force would not have been the right place for you to have the career you’re looking for.” He let the truth that Tony wouldn’t even have been kept on remain unspoken but mutually understood between them.

“And what about me?” Chan asked, “If I turn this down, will an invitation from the Air Force mysteriously arrive at my door tomorrow morning?” Naird hesitated, lifting a hand to scratch his neck and seeing the understanding cross Chan’s face without him having to say it.

“I hadn’t expected to face this much resistance to the idea, Doctor Chan,” he said instead, “I thought you’d see it as an opportunity to use your skills for good and well, Tony, I thought I’d only need to mention spies and you’d be in.” Tony’s next exhalation sounded faintly like an unamused laugh. “Duncan? Captain Ali?”

“I can see why something needs to be done about this,” Angela offered up, pointedly ignoring Chan when he interrupted his own grumbling to look betrayed by her confession. “And I suppose I understand why you’ve been asked to coordinate it, sir. So, if there really isn’t an offer coming from anywhere else, I don’t see why we would turn this down.”

“Because none of us are qualified,” Tony answered simply, his incredulity seeping into everything, from his tone to his widespread arms.

“I’m in, sir,” Duncan spoke up. For the time being, Mark ignored Tony’s continued doubt, turning to Doctor Mallory.

“Adrian? You’ve been quiet for some time.”

“For the record, I think this is a terrible idea,” Adrian replied, although even his attitude couldn’t diminish the relief that coursed through Mark’s veins. “But as Captain Ali says, I’d rather be part of this car crash than not have a job at all.”

“Chan?” Mark turned to the younger scientist hopefully, watching him scrutinise Adrian for a moment and then shrug.

“It sounds like I don’t have a great deal of choice,” he said frankly, taking his turn ignoring Tony’s disbelief. He turned to the other man before he could vocalise his complaints. “What else are you going to do?”

“Fine,” Tony agreed unconvincingly, pulling the card from his pocket, “But we stop with the mysterious coordinate shit right now.” He scraped a hand across his forehead and continued to firmly avoid eye contact with Mark.

He did so for the remainder of their short meeting, in which Naird told them to meet at his house the next day. As Duncan, Angela and Chan headed back to the collection of cars on the roadside, Tony headed back the way he came, declining a lift to wherever it was he’d left his car. Mark could feel Adrian hovering at his shoulder as he followed Tony’s path back up the road.

“You know, it’s rather transparent that you care,” he said with his usual degree of bluntness, “And Tony strikes me as someone who would benefit from realising that.” Mark sighed microscopically, allowing the gesture to serve as his response.

Another folder had turned up at his door that morning with a new list of things he had to deal with. The continuing saga of Tony’s unpredictable mood slotted itself in at the bottom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In this chapter Adrian represents me critiquing my own stories and constantly pointing out plot holes :))))
> 
> Also it has been decided by me and beenicetobees that casual Tony = Jean-Ralphio so that’s my justification for his choice of clothing XD


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So you might notice that the dates have shifted a bit. Basically, I forgot inauguration existed (I don't understand America's political system XD ) so everything needed to be shifted a couple of months into the future (also thank you to your_cia_agent for pointing this out, I’d completely overlooked it!)
> 
> So in summary:  
> Space force closed on Thursday 28th January   
> Meeting in desert took place on Monday 1st February

**Tuesday 2nd February 2020  
11:30**

“Hey bug.” Mark tried not to sound guilty of ignoring Erin’s phone calls for the entire morning, opting for the feigning ignorance option and knowing she would likely see through it.

“What’s going on, Dad?” Her question served adequately as her accusation, her tone still so much like that of a teenager even though she’d gone away to college and started to grow up. “Do you think I just don’t read the news or something?”

“Of course not,” Mark replied, hoping to douse her frustration before it became another situation he had to handle. And there was the rest of the team to think about, just visible in the living room as he’d retreated to the kitchen. He could see Chan gesticulating about something, Tony’s energy to behave similarly having ran out abruptly within an hour of his arrival. He was stood in the corner of the room, not unlike his preferred stance in the Space Force control room where he could appraise the entire room and keep himself out of the action.

“So,” Erin said pointedly when he left a pause that she perceived as microscopically too long. “What? You don’t have a job anymore? What happened? Are you moving again?” He ignored the slight twinge he felt when she didn’t refer to them moving together, stopping short of commenting on the slight hint of disappointment in her tone, as if getting as far away from Colorado was no longer top of her agenda. It wasn’t as if she’d taken the opportunity of college to go any further than Boulder after all, but he sensed that was more to do with being able to visit the prison every couple of weekends.

“I’m not moving anywhere for the time being,” he chose to answer her last question, struggling to phrase what she would consider an adequate response for any of the others. “The shut-down was news to me as well; I only found out the day before it happened.” This, at least, was the truth. He wouldn’t tell her about the meetings he’d been invited to with the new president a week earlier nor how the subject had been raised at that point but left to hang in the air as nothing more than an irritating question mark.

“Where are you working?” She asked, still sounding perplexed. He was grateful when she moved on and accepted what he’d just said, evidently hearing the silent reassurance in his tone that he would have told her if he’d known any earlier.

“I’ve got some work to do for the government,” he explained, keeping it vague in a way that would rile her up endlessly, “Maybe a bit more travel, some flexibility with hours. I think it will be a nice change.” He heard a dry laugh through the speaker and rolled his eyes at the empty air in front of him. Erin had a way with words; a moody, weary beyond her age way; but an even greater affinity with those wordless inflections that perfectly conveyed her mood.

“So that’s what they meant when they said you’d continue to work at a high level within the armed forces?” She sounded amused again by the wording of whatever article she had been reading and Mark had to agree with her reaction. The vague hand-waving excuses to try and explain away his change in position only seemed to draw more attention to him, making him wish that someone had thought to give him a solid excuse.

“Kind of,” he agreed, imagining her helplessly shaking head and trying to say as much as he could. “It isn’t exactly going to be a public facing role most of the time. More advisory really.”

“This is worse than trying to work it out from the articles,” she told him frankly. “No offence, Dad but if you’re involved in some sort of secret operation, you need to get better at pretending not to be.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, bug,” he replied lightly, smiling when Erin laughed slightly again. She had grown up learning to keep some things quiet and more recently, when the moon mission had gone so wrong, she had kept that to herself as well. One more secret didn’t seem like an unfair thing to share.

“I’m sure you don’t,” she said sarcastically, “But the base is really shutting down? I guess I don’t have a summer job when I come back then?”

“Yeah, sorry Erin,” he replied, “I’m not sure how much longer I’ll be based out here anyway though so there might be some more options wherever I do end up.”

A month or so ago, she would have reacted to that with an uncontained bout of teenage anger, accusing him of pulling her away from Maggie or never giving her somewhere permanent to call home. He was grateful that he didn’t have to contend with that anymore, even if he felt the loss of the arguing more keenly than he expected.

She talked a little more about Boulder anyway, seeming unaffected by the idea of them moving once more. At least she had somewhere else to stay if he was dragged away to another small town in the middle of a desert.

“I should probably get back to work,” Mark said reluctantly, glancing back over at the coffee table which was now covered by documents from no longer ordered files and at Adrian who looked like he was already contemplating quitting. “If I don’t rescue Adrian in a minute I think he’s going to take the approach of irritating me until I have to fire him.”

“How come you’re still working with Doctor Mallory if Space Force doesn't exist anymore?” Erin jumped on him instantly. He was starting to think she would be an ideal recruit to the team if anyone decided they weren’t on board. But her perceptiveness made it difficult to answer the question, especially as she had a talent for gaining more of an insight from his refusal to answer something than the blatant lie he could tell instead.

“Oh,” she cut back in, drawing the syllable out into the silence he’d left to linger, “He's part of the top-secret thing?”

“No…” Mark hastened to reply, trying to reinforce his own uncertain denial with a justification, “We just needed to tie up some loose ends.”

“Sure thing, Dad,” Erin played along. He could hear the grin in her voice and smiled very reluctantly to himself.

“Adrian is probably better equipped to help with that math you were talking about earlier this week, bug.” He decided to change the subject, resigning himself to proving her point that something ‘top-secret’ was happening. “I think college is getting beyond my level.”

“College is getting beyond _my_ level,” she replied frustratedly, at least distracted from her interrogation for a moment.

“Stick with it, Erin,” he said patiently, “I’ll call you again in a few days so you can come home and visit your mum, okay?”

“Okay,” she agreed, suddenly allowing herself to sound audibly concerned, “Be careful, Dad.”

“Don’t worry about me, Erin,” he replied easily, “The role is purely advisory, remember?”

“If you say so, Dad.”

* * *

**Tuesday 2nd February 2020  
11:40**

“This is a terrible idea,” Chan concluded, throwing his copy of their first set of instructions onto the pile that had spread across the coffee table as everyone else had reacted similarly. Adrian glanced over at Mark who seemed to be searching for the motivation to return to the group and tried to shift the conversation to something more productive.

“At least it’s an intelligence focused task,” he said fairly, relieved that there was nothing too stereotypically cinematic about the contents of the folder. Being involved in a ludicrous game of laser tag was the closest he was happy to get to a gun and, looking around at the lack of provisions that had been made, he was already adopting the mindset that he would be the voice of reason when it came to keeping everyone else out of the line of fire.

Unfortunately, his intention for Mark to hear some positivity coming from the group was foiled when the only response he got to his own attempts to lighten the mood was a snort from Tony who had settled himself into a corner of the living room, detaching himself from the rest of the seated group. And to further make matters worse, this was the first thing Mark heard as he retook his seat.

“Right, sorry about that,” he said, seeming undeterred. Or maybe, Adrian suspected, the general had reached a point of helplessness that allowed him to blissfully ignore just how out of their depth everyone was. “I see you’ve all read the files.”

“Yes, although I think everyone would benefit from having it explained without the complication of the accompanying jargon,” Adrian replied, feeling charitable enough to give Mark a chance. He aimed his remark slightly towards Tony, hoping that the other man wasn’t so frustrated that he couldn’t hear the silent request for him to hear the general out.

“Good idea, Adrian,” Mark agreed, still managing to maintain the upbeat quality to his voice, “Our first lead suggests that a well-known dealer in information has recently contacted the source or sources who have infiltrated the armed forces. We have reason to believe that an exchange will take place between this dealer and the next link in the chain in three weeks’ time.”

“But the target,” Chan began, reaching for the folder again and searching for something, “The person we’re meant to observe receiving the information; they aren’t the intended recipient?”

“No, they’re just another middle man,” Mark confirmed, lacing his fingers together and leaning forwards, “The data that is being passed around here is very sensitive so it only makes sense that the people involved would want to keep it moving. The final recipient will also be hoping to retain some anonymity from the earlier links in the chain who are, after all, closer to the armed forces and therefore more likely to be detected. What they don’t know is that we are already on their trail and, as the earlier links _are_ easier to locate, we hope to follow the information to its final destination.”

“Which is?” Tony spoke up, eyes narrowed slightly.

“We can’t be sure,” Naird replied, moving swiftly to cut off the follow up that Tony looked ready to spring on him, “Like I’ve already said, we have far more resources focused on tracking the information once it has left the armed forces bases. That’s how we’ve managed to find the dealer…”

“But the final recipient could be anyone,” Angela said tentatively, as if she was reluctant to add another disagreeing voice against Mark, “We don’t know what we’re walking into.”

“The exchange that may take place in three weeks’ time is not with the intended recipient,” Mark said with a confidence that made Adrian uneasy. He didn’t like not knowing things and Mark keeping information from them didn’t help matters.

“How can you be sure?” He probed further, refraining from accusing Mark of being secretive too quickly.

“The target who we believe will collect the information is another person who has been monitored for some time,” Mark replied, “They’re known for being more of a conduit.”

“And if the exchange does take place, what do we do then?” Duncan asked.

“Our remote team would keep tabs on the target until a further exchange seemed likely,” Mark instructed. “If that situation seemed like one that may be the end of the line, we would look for options to intercept the information and identify the recipient.”

“Sounds perfectly safe,” Tony commented sarcastically. Mark’s eyebrows furrowed slightly but he ignored the remark.

“So, to summarise, there is an event coming up in three weeks during which we anticipate an exchange of information between the person we are currently trailing and a new target. Tony and Angela will go in with false identities and attempt to witness some suggestion of an exchange, at which point we will move our focus over to the target who will hopefully reveal the next link in the chain to us. There should be no contact with either party and, therefore, a low risk of the mission ending badly. Tony and Angela will be able to leave through the front door of the event without being detected.”

Adrian was glad that his half-hearted request to hear the task laid out in front of them had in fact reassured him to some extent. Not that Tony seemed any calmer about the whole situation; although it was becoming less clear if this was residual frustration or nerves over his arguably pivotal role in the operation.

“And what do we do now?” Chan asked, glancing down at the open folder once more, “We have until the 20th.”

“You and Adrian need to become familiar with the layout of the building and get Tony and Angela an invite to the event,” Mark instructed, his casual tone almost making Adrian laugh. But he still didn’t complain, sensing that Naird had too much on his plate to engage in another shouting match. He wasn’t making it easy though, acting as if all scientists could immediately apply their skills to a new field with no training.

“What about me and Tony?” Angela asked, “I mean, I have some training from Space Force but nothing suitable for undercover work. And Tony has never had any experience like that.” Tony nodded in agreement, still staying put even as his frown started to look more and more like that worry Adrian had suspected.

“I believe Tony’s experience in public relations will be an important asset on the mission,” Mark explained, “You may have to talk your way out of a problem and he’s arguably the best man for the job.” It was rare for Mark to be so discerning with his compliments, the brief hope that crossed his face that it might have a positive impact on Tony’s mood passing quickly.

“And are we working here permanently?” Adrian asked to change the subject, wrinkling his nose at the familial surroundings and lack of equipment. Mark glanced around as if he’d forgotten their location for a moment but then shook his head.

“There’s an empty house a few streets away that will act as our temporary base of operations,” he said, “At least until POTUS decides if we would be better placed somewhere else in the country.”

“Surely anywhere would be better than here,” Chan suggested hesitantly, sounding unusually out of his depth, “We’re in the middle of nowhere and there’s absolutely no cover for what work we could be doing. What are we meant to say to the people who ask why we’re still living out here?”

“That you’re working remotely, doing consultancy work, anything that can be explained away with as little detail as possible and not connected directly to a named company,” Mark instructed, “I understand that this may be a challenge to begin with but we will become established over time and that will hopefully bring a greater sense of structure. For now, it’s more important that we remain anonymous and undetected within the rest of the armed forces though.”

Chan seemed satisfied, with everyone except Tony nodding in understanding. Adrian stacked the files together on the coffee table and turned to discuss possible approaches with Chan as Mark stood up with a poorly suppressed sigh.

“Tony, come here for a minute.” He nodded towards the kitchen, moving away from the group without stopping to check if the other man was following. When he turned around, Tony was there, the same look of unusually helpless frustration marring his face. “Look, have we got a problem here?”

For a moment, Tony’s wide-eyed disbelief made Mark think he would break the illusion of their private conversation, his voice threatening to rise to that exasperated level he had frequently used around the base. But when he did speak, it was just a strained whisper.

“I signed up to run the twitter account of the joke branch of the armed forces! I didn’t sign up for whatever the hell this has become! Petty media management is the only thing I’ve ever been half decent at. I’m not cut out for this,” he argued incredulously, waving a hand behind him at the rest of the group, “ _We_ are not cut out for this!”

“Why not?” Naird replied, trying to forget that he knew exactly where Tony was coming from. There was an attitude in the armed forces; some extreme version of ‘fake it ‘til you make it’ that usually required an unrealistic belief that you were capable of anything you were asked to do.

Mark had gone through the thought process that was working its way across Tony’s face already, as soon as he’d submitted the list of people he felt he could trust with such a task. The weight of sending people who hadn’t been trained into unpredictable situations hung heavily over his shoulders. He’d become used to carrying that responsibility with him though – so used to it in fact, that the addition of another source of stress had worried him far less than it should have. And even though he had the self-awareness to acknowledge his growing sense of detachment when it came to matters where emotions could cloud his judgement, it hadn’t stopped him from approaching this new challenge with the same façade of confidence he’d relied on for years.

“Why not?” Tony echoed, looking as if Naird had grown another head or, more worryingly, as if he didn’t think he was the same man who had been running Space Force. “You’re putting people in danger, sir! There was a time when you wouldn’t sign off on me overseeing science demonstrations at the school outreach events because you thought I was a risk to public safety. And now you seem happy to let me wander into a building full of criminals!”

“We’ve got time to prepare,” Mark assured him, hearing the weakness in his own conviction. They would need a lot of time to quiet his own concerns; far longer than the three weeks they actually had. Tony seemed to be creating enough disaster scenarios in his head for Mark to add his own into the mix so he continued to paint a picture of optimism. “You’ll have someone in your ear the entire time and our only aim will be to do some scouting. No one is going to be causing a scene or jumping off a rooftop…”

“Look, I don’t doubt Chan’s ability as a scientist, but I wouldn’t be reassured if he was watching my back because, like me, he has no idea what we’re involved in,” Tony interjected again, still looking fed up.

“I thought you were happy to give this a chance,” Mark said eventually, reminded of the incredibly reluctant way Tony had agreed to their new venture the day before. “If you aren’t, I need to start looking elsewhere.”

“I get the sense that I know a bit too much for that to be an option,” Tony replied, even at that moment looking over his shoulder like he expected a red sniper dot to appear out of nowhere. Mark rolled his eyes in the moment it took for him to look back, not wanting to cause another argument by being caught looking amused.

“It would be difficult to get you out of this without some sort of debrief,” he conceded fairly. Again, he hadn’t exactly prepared for the reluctance with which most of them had accepted their new employment status and getting anyone out of the small group that had been granted permission to be told such confidential information wasn’t a problem that had crossed his mind. 

“Okay,” Tony gave up surprisingly easily, still shaking his head with discontent. “You know I don’t think this is going to work. I suppose when the first plan inevitably fails this will be handed over to someone who is actually qualified.”

Naird didn’t have a response to that. It would be a lie to say the thought hadn’t crossed his mind before he’d buried it with his unwavering belief that the team could do the impossible. But now, only one thought dominated; it had been less of a logistical nightmare to run an entire branch of the armed forces than coordinating a small team of stubborn not-spies was proving itself to be.


	5. Chapter 5

**Thursday 18th February 2021  
20:45**

Tony had never been packed and ready for a trip so far in advance in all of his adult life. Maybe it was some residual rebellious streak that he hadn’t exhausted as a kid or maybe he was just lazy but packing a suitcase had always been a last-minute job. But with two days to go and enough reasons for his mind to go mad in the silence of his house, the mind-numbing task of folding clothes was a welcome distraction.

He tugged his bag into the hallway, dropping it besides the front door and filling the room with a drawn-out sigh that had really established itself in his day to day vocabulary in the last month. Two days to go until a man, who still hadn’t mastered packing a suitcase without leaving every piece of clothing creased, would be infiltrating an event advertised to rich entrepreneurs.

Wild Horse had always been quiet, even when an entire base worth of employees were working, eating and living there but the isolation of the last four weeks had become oppressive, leaving him with even fewer distractions from the task at hand than he would have had otherwise. Of course, if the town was still populated with base employees, it followed that Space Force would still be open so he wouldn’t be taking part in some amateur spy craft just to get his next paycheque.

There was a flash, amplified through the glass of his front window, the sudden light illuminating the small living area. He blinked in the new return of the darkness, moving back over to the front door and debating whether or not a spy would open the door and have a look around. His heart pounded momentarily in his chest and he wondered if he was getting more paranoid since Naird had started teaching him to always look over his shoulder.

The window was slightly ajar, letting in a fragment of the late evening air and, with it, a whispered curse. Tony frowned, trying to convince himself he didn’t recognise the voice, and opened the front door with the confidence of a man who definitely recognised the voice.

“Hannah?” He leant out of the door, looking down the steps and into the small flowerbed (which was more overgrown with weeds than anything else). “What are you doing here?”

He heard an exasperated sigh and then watched as Hannah extracted herself from the bushes, somehow still looking immaculate in a way that was more annoying than impressive. She lifted one hand, brushing an imaginary piece of dirt from her shoulder and putting on the patient expression of a parent who has caught their child doing something illogical. If Tony could ever have strung a series of words together in her presence that made sense, he’d have told her that he was the one who should have been looking at her that way.

“Just testing you, Scarapiducci,” she said as if it was obvious, “I don’t know why I ever believed you might have developed the skills you’d need to come and work for me but for some reason I decided to check.”

“By taking a picture of my living room?” Tony asked disbelievingly. “What does that prove?”

“That you aren’t taking the necessary precautions,” she replied, striding up the stairs and brushing past him as if it were her house they were entering. He followed at her heels, forgetting the judgemental tone of her voice and only registering that she could; maybe, possibly, _hopefully_ ; offer him a job. She had started to inspect the house, a permanently underwhelmed sneer on her face. “If you were in charge of keeping the paparazzi from invading the privacy of your client, you’d have fallen at the first hurdle.”

“This is my house!” Tony complained, not protesting when she flicked a switch and bathed the house in light. After all, it was bare enough to never really start looking untidy; not that he cared about impressing her. He definitely didn’t.

“And you think your client would be reassured to find this lazy approach to security in your own home?” She asked, wrinkling her nose at the mismatch of cushions that lay across the sofa.

“I caught you, didn’t I?” Tony challenged, perching on the arm of one chair and folding his arms. She stopped her inspection of the house, looking back and sighing with faux sympathy.

“Oh, Anthony, you have so much to learn,” she said airily, shaking her head, “In this scenario, I have the photo I want. You may have realised it happened, which is a start if I’m being generous, but the photo is still in my possession.”

“Not if I take your phone,” Tony replied, getting to his feet and walking over to her. She held her phone loosely between her fingers, swinging it idly as if daring him to even try. He knew it was a game to her and that she wanted him to try. So he did.

“What are you going to do once you have it? You can’t get into it without a passcode,” she taunted, holding it behind her as he tried to reach around and take it. She smiled sweetly and swapped it to the other hand, continuing to keep it out of his reach.

“Hannah,” Tony complained frustratedly, “Hannah! Come on…”

“How are you going to delete the picture?” She asked again, now phrasing every question as if she was the teacher leading a confused student to the correct answer.

“I’ll make you unlock it,” Tony grumbled under his breath. Truth be told, he hadn’t thought that far ahead. He didn’t think around Hannah very often. Their arrangement had never been one that required or afforded much thought. If he had thought about it, perhaps he’d have been uncomfortable with the rivalry between them which did more to keep them together than any real feelings that existed beyond the antagonism.

“I thought you were past the underhand techniques,” she teased, “Working for the government now… or not, anymore.” Tony sighed frustratedly, knowing that it was only a matter of time before she really got to the reason she was there. If there had been one constant thread running through the numerous setbacks in his career, it was Hannah, turning up to watch a carefully rebuilt reputation burn.

“What are you still doing here anyway?” She continued, looking around the house with another frown on her face, “Surely you haven’t stayed for the location. And what are you doing for work? I was surprised when Space Force hired you and it was definitely the only place around here that would take someone like you.”

“I’m doing some independent work,” he said easily, feeling Naird’s lie tripping off his tongue with a nonchalance that instilled a bit of hope in him that the weekend might work out okay. “You know, contract stuff for some different companies.”

“There isn’t much chance of this but – anywhere I’ve heard of?”

“I’m not stupid, Hannah,” Tony retorted witheringly, “As if I’m going to give you a list of places for you to send your lies to first thing tomorrow morning.”

“I wouldn’t,” she replied, much worse than lying than Tony thought he was, “But now that I’ve made a name for myself, working for Edison, I thought it was important that I checked in with you.

“And how’s Edison’s rocket fuel business coming along?” Tony knew it was childish but relished in the scowl on her usually impassive face. He stepped away from her, returning to his makeshift seat on the arm of the sofa.

“Are you giving up?” Hannah asked disappointedly, pocketing her phone and moving away from the wall.

“I’ve told you, I don’t need a job anyway,” he replied reluctantly, imagining Naird’s reaction if he abandoned the team so soon before Saturday and recoiling enough just from the thought of it that turning down Hannah seemed the more appealing option.

“You’re lucky I’d even consider you,” she said, “This whole business with Space Force is being covered up so much, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that you somehow had a part in ruining it.”

“Well I didn’t,” Tony snapped petulantly, folding his arms and aiming a glare at the ground. It was maybe the first job he’d lost where the blame could be traced back to someone else (General Naird) and their inexplicable belief in the loose team they’d put together.

“They didn’t even keep you on for the move to the Air Force,” Hannah argued back persistently. “You either caused the shutdown or didn’t make a big enough impact to be considered worth keeping.”

Tony rolled his eyes, still glaring at the ground. They’d been in the same position so many times, it felt like reading off a script. She’d tell him everything he’d done wrong since the last time they spoke. He’d weakly defend his bad choices and sometimes make her laugh with his stubborn belief in his own actions. One of them would kiss the other and they’d go from there.

It was always the same with her.

* * *

**Saturday 20th February 2021  
21:00**

“Why are they even doing a trade in the open like this? Has the black market for government information not realised that emails exist?” Tony ignored Chan’s muffled laugh in reply, rubbing his hands together expectantly as he waited with Angela on the other side of the road from the event they were about to attend. 

The steady stream of guests had started to dry up and they were waiting to slip in with some of the latecomers, hoping to at least avoid a public scene if Adrian and Chan’s hasty preparations had not paid off. Thinking about that made Tony’s hand drift to his pocket and the mocked-up invitation tucked away in there. Every movement he made felt like something that could give him away to any number of people who had no reason to even be looking for suspicious activity.

“Seriously though?” He pressed Chan further, quietly comforted by the sigh that filled his ear and awaiting the intelligent point that would prove why Tony should be putting himself into the dangerous situations whilst Chan was kept in a hotel room somewhere, only at risk of straining his eyes in front of a computer screen. 

“You’re saying if you were in this situation you’d email the highly sensitive government secrets?” 

Tony tempered the grin that threatened to break out across his face at Chan’s question, exhaling a laugh of his own.

“I’m saying I wouldn’t be walking around with a memory stick in my pocket,” he corrected belligerently, ignoring Angela as she rolled her eyes. This was a point that he had already made several times, even when General Naird had finally given in to his questioning with an assurance that this memory stick really did exist and was in fact the transportation method of choice when it came to exchanging the information they were in pursuit of.

“This whole event is full of people likely performing similar trades of information,” Chan replied patiently, pausing for a moment and letting the line fill with static and the faint sound of a keyboard being used, “They set up fancy dinners and parties to give everyone a place to be, mixed in with guests who would actually turn up to this sort of thing.”

“And, in doing so, give the people who are spying on them the perfect alibi to do so,” Tony interjected, again seeing an expression on Angela’s face that he imagined would be mirrored quite accurately on Chan’s.

“Do you want to say that any louder?” She raised an eyebrow in his direction and shook her head. “I know we’re both amateurs here but even I have refrained from announcing our intentions to the entire street.”

“Right, you two,” Adrian finally interrupted, his own hesitance just noticeable in the wavering of his voice. It was even less reassuring to think that he had gone to the effort of trying to hide it from them, however unsuccessfully. “Now seems like an appropriate time to approach the front gates. Just pass them your invitations, stick to the cover story if anyone makes small talk and don’t put your foot in it, Tony.”

“I thought we’d established that I should be handling the conversations given my unparalleled ability to bullshit everyone I’ve ever met,” Tony replied, paraphrasing what he was sure Naird had intended to be a compliment at their meeting earlier that week. Adrian’s aborted laugh suggested otherwise.

The gates were manned by two people, their figures made more imposing by well-fitted suits that even made Tony tug on his blazer a little sheepishly. He felt the rougher material of the thin vest Naird had tossed to him from the other side of their hotel room when he’d started to get ready. They hadn’t talked about it (mostly because Tony suspected Naird was starting to share his second thoughts about the safety of them being thrown into a potentially tricky situation) but there had been a steady weight in Naird’s eyes that had asked him not to bring it up. Tony wasn’t convinced it was thick enough to stop a bullet; then again, he was also trying not to consider that as a possibility at all.

“Good evening,” Tony greeted the two security guards as cheerfully as he could manage, pulling on the many years of experience he now had of feeling incredibly out of place in a room but trying to convey his unwavering confidence. One of them nodded mutely, taking the two invitations from Tony’s hand and looking them over. The second guard remained uninvolved, glancing up and down the road with the sort of boredom on his face that Tony was more used to seeing on Brad’s and Duncan’s.

The guard in front of them was taking her time, cross-referencing the fake names on their invites with the guest list that had hopefully been edited accordingly by Chan. Whilst both scientists had argued that their skill sets would not lend themselves to espionage, he had taken to hacking worryingly naturally and Tony suspected that he’d known more than he’d let on to begin with. He was a total nerd, after all.

Angela gave him a sideward glance as they were waiting to which he mustered a brief, uneasy smile. For all of her theoretical knowledge of combat situations, Angela was as out of her depth as he was when it came to selling a false identity.

“Go on in,” the woman in front of them drawled eventually, nodding her head through the open gates and towards the front door of the mansion.

The path leading to the open door was cobbled in expensive stone and lined by bushes cut into perfect spheres. There were coloured fountains dotted around the lawns beyond tall exterior walls, the lights beneath the water colouring it pink and blue. Tony tried not to be distracted by the majesty of their surroundings, instead cataloguing the building in front of them and attempting to search for emergency exit routes if it were to come to that.

“Why do you think they spent so long checking the list?” Angela asked, having glanced over her shoulder to ensure they were in private. Tony shrugged but her question reminded him that he wasn’t on his own and he held his arm out for her to take, which she did so reluctantly.

“Of course we have to be a couple,” she complained under her breath, “They could have given us a backstory that required less acting.”

“I’m offended that you’re finding it so difficult,” he replied drily, almost smiling at her glare before remembering what was going on. That happened a lot at the moment – it was easy to get caught up in having an important job to do, in having a purpose beyond running a twitter account (even though he did maintain that he had done more than just that at Space Force). And there had been something that had made him feel like a kid messing around with his friends when he, Angela and Chan had been preparing for their first mission.

The reality hit more acutely when they stepped across the threshold of the house, greeted by monumental pillars and a busy hall. Everyone looked so comfortable in that setting, reaching to take food from trays as they passed as if this was a normal thing to be doing and suddenly Tony felt like an imposter all over again.

“Okay, we’re in,” Angela muttered at his side, leading him towards the perimeter of the room and tightening her grip on his arm momentarily. It felt reassuring even if she was just doing it to ensure that they weren’t separated.

“Right, that’s one thing out of the way,” Adrian replied, almost sounding as if he was talking to himself, “Remember to keep an eye out for our target and don’t let her get out of sight. We need to verify that some sort of exchange took place before we start arranging for her movements to be tracked. And any information you can get about the person delivering the information would be useful to have.”

“What if the target disappears with someone?” Tony asked under his breath, aiming the question at Angela as if they were having a conversation between the two of them, “We follow them or-?”

“I suppose we’ll assess that situation if it arises,” Adrian replied, his continued uncertainty really not helping Tony’s faltering sense of confidence. Maybe the older man could sense that or maybe he’d just been kicked under the desk by Chan but he quickly followed up. “All we need is reasonable certainty that something has changed hands. I’d say that the target and someone else disappearing somewhere would give us that evidence.”

“Obviously if we could verify it had happened, that would be better though, right?” Angela asked, hearing the thoughtful affirmative from Adrian a moment later. Tony tried not to look too frustrated that she had suggested getting themselves into a potentially more dangerous situation and shook his own discomfort off once more.

General Naird was, much to his own reluctance, out at a military event nearby to reduce the likelihood of anyone suspecting him. It had been mentioned a couple of times at their makeshift base in Colorado that it would look conspicuous if the sources within the armed forces suddenly caught wind of the suspicion surrounding them so soon after Space Force had been shut down. Tony agreed with all of this of course but the proposed solution of Mark being unable to coordinate their first mission seemed like a bad one.

“There,” Angela murmured, dragging his thoughts away from the general and towards the direction she was nodding in, “Just entered the room.” Tony glanced over, looking over the heads of the gathered crowd and spotting the person who matched the grainy photo they’d been poring over for weeks. 

“How do you want to do this?” Tony asked, stopping himself as another couple crossed in front of them. He waited for them to move away and continued. “Would it be easier to split up? We need to cover the exits to the room.” Angela looked reluctant but nodded nonetheless.

“I’ll take the main entrance,” she replied, pointing to the door at the opposite end of the room, “You go down there. And get a drink to have in your hands or something. You look like you’re about to pickpocket someone when you fidget like that.” Tony glanced down at his interlocked fingers and separated them, smiling lopsidedly at Angela’s faint amusement.

“Aye aye, Captain,” he murmured, returning his gaze to their target and heading off between the groups of guests, trying not to lose sight of her.

He made it across the room without having to make use of his hastily learned spiel about being a young entrepreneur, picking up a glass of champagne on his way and half-listening to Angela talking to someone else through their earpieces. When he turned back to survey the rest of the room, he caught sight of her as she was surrounded by a group of three seemingly talkative guests at the main doorway.

In a break in their conversation, she glanced idly across the room at him, looking apologetic. 

“I can still see her,” Tony muttered into his earpiece, “Just work on getting rid of them.”

Their target was a blonde-haired woman, not much older than Tony. She seemed to be comfortable in her camouflage as a young, rich, successful person; well-dressed and holding herself with a confidence that Tony envied. She was looking out across the room casually, occasionally smiling at another guest and saying a few words. Unlike with Angela, they seemed to move away from her quickly enough.

“Angela isn’t getting out of this conversation any time soon,” Adrian reported to Tony, “Can you still see our target?”

“Yeah,” Tony replied, trying to follow the other woman’s gaze out across the room in search of the previous link in the chain. Their lead started and ended with her – if he didn’t get something on the person who turned up with the information, they would be no closer to identifying the source in the armed forces. Tony had his own, more selfish motivation as well and failure here would bring him no closer to getting his life back on a normal track.

He pulled his eyes back to the woman just as her back disappeared into the next room. He glanced around the main room once more, not seeing anyone following her and swore under his breath.

“What is it?” Chan asked swiftly. Tony almost cursed again, forgetting that every breath was currently audible to the two scientists.

“She’s moved,” he muttered, moving towards the doorway but hesitating without Angela to back him up. “I didn’t see anyone with her.”

“Can you confirm that some sort of exchange is taking place?” Adrian asked.

“I didn’t see anyone with her,” Tony repeated, casting one last glance towards Angela and then heading through to a slightly less populated room, although no less lavishly decorated. “I’ve moved through to the next room.”

“Ali, work on getting through to Tony,” Adrian’s voice continued over the earpiece, “We don’t want to separate the two of you too much.” Tony wondered at what point the older scientist would call Mark for back-up. It seemed that their makeshift plan falling apart wasn’t a sufficient reason.

He caught sight of their target, biting his lip when she headed swiftly towards a marble staircase and walked up it as if she was meant to be there. Tony glanced over his shoulder again, seeing no one following him or her.

“She’s going upstairs,” he said, “I can follow her…”

“That doesn’t seem sensible,” Chan hastened to interject, “Has no one else followed her up there?”

Tony was about to respond when a man appeared at the base of the staircase, ascending to the next floor with the same degree of assuredness that she had.

“A man just went up there too,” he said, “I can’t say for certain that the trade is taking place and I have no information about the person following her.”

“It’s your call,” Adrian said after some time, sounding reluctant to be giving Tony so much authority. It almost made him laugh, imagining the displeasure in his expression. “If you go up there, you need to keep your distance. We can’t let them know that we’re tailing them.”

Tony glanced backwards and forwards between the two rooms and the disappearing figure on the staircase. The rest of the room’s occupants seemed distracted or, at least, uninterested in the comings and goings of other guests. He took a single, deep breath and crossed the room with a certainty that he didn’t possess.

He wasn’t getting paid enough for this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So the update schedule has gone a bit out of the window! I want to take my time with this a bit though so I will probably just update as and when I finish things (which will hopefully not be as long as it has been this time - sorry!)

**Author's Note:**

> Here we go again... I don’t know what this is and it is literally built around one or two scenes that I really want to write but there’s a lot of other stuff to write before we get there XD
> 
> I’m aiming for longer chapters on this and at least one update a week so it will be a little less frequent than my last long story but hopefully longer :)
> 
> Teen rating might get bumped up to mature eventually but I'd be lying if I said I knew what was going on in this fic XD


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